I expect a continuation in 2015 of a trend that emerged prominently late last year — a strong appetite by multinational corporations for increased management of their supply chains. On the face of it, this doesn’t sound new. What is different, however — whether managed by 4PLs or LLPs — is the degree to which large corporations are positioning themselves for more control, more structured performance, in their global supply chains as they continue to manage through an uncertain environment and volatility in global transportation capacity, congestion and disruption. They look to companies such as ours to manage that process with them.
The challenge is this: Large organizations are trying to address how to have much better control over their logistics spend for not only increased predictability, but also greater agility. The solution lies in information and connectivity. Connectivity drives efficiencies, and information enables dynamic management, rather than simply reacting to events day-to-day. For example, transporting a shipment via air freight that would usually travel by ocean is just the result of poor planning. If management knows about the situation in advance, there may be other alternatives to simply paying a premium to deal with a challenge.
Having a robust data store provides much better supply chain metrics for continuous improvement. This is the era of Big Data, where capturing the information and providing the analytics behind it provides the opportunity to precisely manage transit time by lane, by mode and determine where there are opportunities for improvement through either process changes, or by — in the case of the 4PLs or LLPs — collecting data from all participants for dynamic management of the supply chain. This approach provides a much greater opportunity for driving performance and managing risks. What’s new is Big Data — the amount of information that can now be brought to bear to enable dynamic supply chain management. Large corporations are hungry for it.
Kim Wertheimer, Executive Vice President, Global Industrial and Technology Sectors, CEVA Logistics